Get More Clients Online

MindMeister

If you're like most entrepreneurs, you lie awake at night, unable to turn off your mind and all the ideas that come to you at all hours. Or, perhaps you need a place to put all the pieces of a project together.

Now you can record your brainstormed ideas and how they connect to each other with a free online mind mapping tool, Mindmeister.

MindMeister brings the concept of mind mapping to the web, using its facilities for real-time collaboration to allow truly global brainstorming sessions. Users can create, manage and share mind maps online and access them anytime, from anywhere. In brainstorming mode, fellow MindMeisters from around the world (or just in different rooms) can simultaneously work on the same mind map and see each other's changes as they happen.

You can share instantly any mind map with friends and colleagues. Invitees will receive an email with a link and - depending on what access you give them - will be able to contribute or just read. To share your map with the whole world, click the 'Publish' button and integrate the map into your blog or web site.

One of the service's coolest feature is its collaboration feature. When two or more users open the same mind map at the same time, both of you are in brainstorming mode. Every change either of you makes will be replicated instantly to your fellow editors' screens via their server. Through color-coded effects they will see what you did and vice versa, without having to refresh the page.

They also offer fee-based editions with additional features if you decide that you like the tool and want to upgrade.

Start outlining your projects and your brainstorms here.

timerSync

Time is money. Every wasted minute means losing valuable dollars.

To help you better track your time, try  timerSync.  It lets you track your time and submit automatically to FreshBooks™ for invoicing.

timerSync is fast, simple to use, and small, as it sits in your system tray and is ready work for you with just a click. Start a task, time it to the second and sync with FreshBooks for easy and accurate client invoicing. With just one glance you can determine what time has been billed out and what time remains to be invoiced to your clients. Because it sits in your system try, you can submit time entries directly from your desktop without opening any browser windows.

My favorite feature is the one that reminds me to turn off timerSync and to submit to Freshbooks. Simply turn on the optional reminder feature, and timerSync makes sure you never go over. It also reminds you to submit your time to FreshBooks – you'll never shortchange yourself again! Best of all, if you get up and walk away from your desk. timerSync automatically stops tracking time when your screensaver activates.

timersync is compatible with Windows Vista, XP and 2000. You can try timersync with a 30-day free trial, and then you'll have to pay for a license to use it beyond the trial period.

Start tracking your time here.

WordWeb

Since I do a great deal of writing each day, I find it helpful to have a dictionary and thesaurus at my fingertips.  I love  WordWeb because it sits in my system tray and I can get immediate access to it anytime I need to check the definition of a word, for example, to ensure that I'm using it properly in my sentence.

WordWeb is a feature-rich software that does much more than a paper dictionary or thesaurus. WordWeb is truly a Word Web - each set of synonyms is linked to other related sets. Look up "tree", click on the "Types" tab and you'll have a list of different types of tree. Click on "Part of" and WordWeb will tell you that a tree can be part of a "forest" or "wood".

My favorite feature is the one-click lookup.  Using the WordWeb hotkey, I can immediately look up the word for which I need more info from almost any program, including Microsoft Word. 

There is a free and a Pro (paid) version of WordWeb.  WordWeb Pro runs under Windows 98/2000/Me/XP and Vista. Sorry, there is no Mac, Palm or Pocket PC version. You do not need to be online to use WordWeb.

 Get help with your word usage here.

Freshbooks

I've been looking for easier and more automated ways to keep up with client invoicing and billing, as well as how to stay up top of bookkeeping tasks.  Bookkeeping has never been one of my favorite tasks, and I never keep up with it like I should.  As a matter of fact, it's one of the tasks I'll be outsourcing this year, but I'd like to do it in a way that doesn't require a bookkeeper to log into my computer, as I tend to be online on my computer for most of each day.

My first discovery was an online invoicing system, Freshbooks.  I like Freshbooks because you can email or snail mail your invoices (I prefer email) and your clients can login and view or download the invoice and pay the invoice, if you have connected your account to an online payment system, like through Paypal or Authorize.net.  Freshbooks integrates to several online time-keeping programs and online accounting programs, so I can easily track time for consulting and consulting expenses and have that recorded in Freshbooks and then invoice accordingly, and have all of that info dumped into my online accounting program.

If you have a staff or work with independent contractors, you can easily track and report on your staff's time or invite contractors to join your team and track time on projects and receive their invoices all in one place.

Start invoicing your clients online here.

Google Insights

If you need help with determining search volume with your keyword research, check out  Google Insights. With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.

If you do a general search comparing several terms without any restrictions, you'll see:

• how searches for the term has varied over the last few years
• current news headline regarding the search term
• in what countries the search term is popular
• top searches for the term
• searches for similar terms that are growing over time

Expand your info on your primary keywords with Google Insights  here.

WeWe Monitor

No, this is not what it sounds like and has nothing to do with bodily fluids.  Instead,  WeWe Monitor by FutureNowInc.com  helps you evaluate web pages to see how much you refer to yourself or your company on the page and how much you refer to your potential clients.  Most online businesses, when initially creating a website, make the web site all about themselves and what they offer and how wonderful they are.

The reality is that most of your prospects only care about WIIFM, or "What's In It For Me?"  They are seeking information about how well you can help them meet their wants and needs. If you want more prospects to buy, your focus has to be on them. How do you communicate that to them? With the words you use on your site. Are you talking mostly about them and their needs or are you talking mostly about yourself?

To help you answer that question, this service provides a free analysis tool that counts certain words on your site that are key indicators of whether your focus is on the customer or not. As you use it, keep in mind this is nothing more than a handy, but rough guide that will help you determine the focus of your site. There are lots of variables to consider, and unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to writing great copy.

This tool will help you:

• Discover what your word choices say about where your focus really is.
• Get a sense of the impression you are making on your prospects.
• See where you can make changes, quickly and easily, that will increase your sales

Most of my sites were 60-70% customer-focused, which earned me an Excellent rating.  One of my clients seriously outscored me with an 85% customer focus, while another client with a new site scored 0% customer focus rate.  Guess we have some work to do there..;->

Evaluate your web site here.

Seesmic Desktop

I've tried a number of tools to help me corral Twitter into a manageable application. The latest on my failure list was TweetDeck, which kept crashing on me. And, I never liked the layout of the application, either.

Now I'm giving  Seesmic Desktop a try. The application is still in beta, but so far, I like what I've seen.

You can set up multiple groups (called Userlists) so that you can follow certain people (or groups of friends or colleagues) more closely than you might follow your entire list of Twitter followers, and you can set up these lists in multiple columns. If you have multiple Twitter accounts, all of your Twitter accounts can be viewed from this application. And, like most programs of this nature, you can view your direct messages, @ replies, and sent Tweets.

The built-in search feature is pretty powerful, whether you're searching for a person, mentions of your own company or yourself, or for an event with a hashtag abbreviation. Now I don't have to use TwitterSearch when I'm trying to find someone.

The application is built using the Adobe Air application, so you will need to download this free app to use Seesmic Desktop. And, unlike most applications, it's both Mac and PC compatible.

Download this free Twitter management tool  here.

Dragon Naturally Speaking 10

For a long time I've been recommending Dragon Naturally Speaking to my clients, especially for those clients who do not like to write.  Dragon Naturally Speaking is transcription software that will translate what you say into written text.

Early editions of Dragon Naturally Speaking did not work as well as promised, but their newest edition, version 10, works like a charm. It takes about 20 minutes or so for you to train the program to understand your voice. And, if you have an accent like I do as a native Texan, you can tell the program that fact in the training process and it will take that into consideration as it creates your user profile. The program also gains information about your writing style by going through your Outlook email outbox as well as your written documents to get a sense of how you compose sentences and then it makes adjustments accordingly.

The results of your dictation aren't perfect by any means. However, it is a very great tool to help you create information on the fly. I've recommended it to clients to help them create articles and blog posts, as it's much easier for them to speak their content rather than write it.  They say that editing a document with content is much easier than starting with a blank page. I love the flexibility this program gives me and highly recommend it.  I've got to create some training docs for my assistant, and being able to speak my way through my office procedures and have that speech transcribed will be so much easier than trying to write the procedures as I go.

As a matter of fact, I dictated this article into my plain text editor, and the program did remarkably well. However, I need to practice my dictation skills because I'm not accustomed to clarifying my punctuation and sentence structure when I talk, like telling the program when to create a new paragraph or insert a comma or end a sentence with a period.

Get your copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking  here.

EditPlus

I compose a great deal of text for websites, my blog, and my ezine in a plain text editor. Using Microsoft Word for these tasks inserts too many hidden characters, so I have been using Notepad, which is built into the Windows system.  Notepad hasn't been serving me well lately, primarily because it doesn't have spell-check capabilities.  I am a great speller, but once I've looked at copy too long, I can no longer see my own mistakes.

Then, from a colleague on Twitter, I learned about  EditPlus. EditPlus is a text editor, HTML editor and programmer's editor for Windows. While it can serve as a good Notepad replacement, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers. Some of its more advanced features include:

• Syntax highlighting for HTML, CSS, PHP, ASP, Perl, C/C++, Java, JavaScript and VBScript. Also, it can be extended for other programming languages based on custom syntax files.
• Seamless Web browser for previewing HTML pages, and FTP commands for uploading local files to FTP server.
• An HTML toolbar, user tools, line number, ruler, URL highlighting, auto-completion, cliptext, column selection, powerful search and replace, multiple undo/redo, spell checker, customizable keyboard shortcuts, and more.

I'll probably never use the majority of the features offered, but because I can have multiple files open at once (without having to save each of them before opening another), can spellcheck my doc, can do a search and replace of text if I need it, and can use the wordwrap feature, it works for me.

You can download a 30-day trial copy  here.

Chameleon Headsets, Part 2

I posted recently on this blog about buying a Chameleon headset.  My tip then appeared in a recent edition of SpeakerNet News and I got several questions about which model I purchased.

I purchased the Model 2002 binaural headset.  You have to pick the kind of cord (what the headset will connect to) and I chose the 1102 cord, which is the one connecting to a 2.5 mm headset jack found in my cordless phone.  I also picked up some replacement foam ear pads and wind screen pads for the microphone of the headset.  Lastly, in order to have a mute feature on the headset, I purchased the mute inline switch 1201, which was a snap to connect to the cord of my headset.

If you prefer only one earpiece, you can purchase the monaural headset from this same vendor.

I received great customer support from Adam at Ear2EarHeadsets.com, so if you purchase one of their headsets, tell them that Donna Gunter sent you. :)